The House has passed a reasonable tax reform package. The Senate should follow suit, but they probably won’t. Just as it was with the repeal of Obama Care a few worthless, asinine Republican senators are going to block the bill. We need to lower our corporate tax rate, which is currently the highest in the industrialized world. We need to simplify our tax code so that average citizens will not have to pay an accountant to file their income taxes. This is common sense, but it probably won’t happen.

The senators who are responsible for this failure are the “usual suspects.” They deserve the “Jump’n Jim Jeffords award” Jim Jeffords was a Republican Senator from Vermont from 1989 to 2001. He kept that party label until the GOP got the majority in the Senate.

Then, just when it looked like the Republican agenda might have chance of enactment, “Jump’n Jim” switched parties. Why? He didn’t want to see the Republican programs enacted now that the GOP had the majority. Talk about being RINO! Talking about having no honesty or integrity! If that was the way he felt, why didn’t he change parties earlier? Why did he take campaign money from the national party to get re-elected on false pretenses? He wanted the power and prestige from his senate seat, that’s why.

Here are the current “Jump’n Jim Jeffords” Senators.

Lisa Murkowski – A senator from the red state of Alaska who now bucks every major piece of Republican legislation. What is wrong with her? If I were an Alaska Republican, I’d be really angry at her. She’s not a red state GOP senator who has to walk on eggs. She could be a real Republican and get re-elected, but she’s decided not to do that.

Susan Collins – A senator from the mostly blue state of Maine. She might have argument that she has to do what she’s doing to hold her seat, but at the moment she fast moving toward the Chuck Schumer camp. After she did her part to keep Obama Care alive, she commented about the “wonderful crowd” she had to greet her at the airport when she returned to Maine. Here’s a message for you lady. Very few of those people will vote for you in your next election. They are almost all Democrats who would never vote for any Republican, not even a RINO like you.

John McCain – McCain is an angry, ornery old man who is disappointed that he didn’t get as far he had hoped in presidential politics. Hey John, it’s not our fault; it’s your fault. You have kept reaching over aisle so often that you don’t have a home in either party any more. I gave money to your presidential campaign in 2008, and I’m now ashamed of that fact.

Ron Johnson – This Wisconsin senator is angry because the tax cuts for small businesses are lower than for corporations. Hey Ron, get over it! Can’t you understand the William F. Buckley principle that getting PART of what you want is better than getting nothing? Small businesses are getting a tax cut in this bill. That beats getting no tax cut.

Ran Paul – I know this guy is a darling for many of you, but to me he’s a purist who also can’t understand the fine art of compromise. Hey Ron, let’s get something instead of nothing. Maybe you can do some tweaking after we accomplished SOMETHING with both houses of Congress and the White House.

Senators like this are the reason why I refuse to give money to the Republican Congressional Campaign funds. Your money goes to support people who won’t support the party when the chips are down.

The cures for the national debt are #1 a growing economy and #2 real cuts in government spending. If you can’t buy into those concepts, the debt will grow, and there is really no place for you in the conservative movement.

It is a foregone conclusion that they will not pass tax REFORM. I seriously doubt that they can pass ANY tax bill and get it to the President’s desk. The GOP is on track to get their @$$ handed to them next November and then they will have the chutzpah to blame President Trump.

I had no illusions of the GOP ever supporting a reform effort of any flavor, especially tax reform.

The GOP sees itself as a stop-gap for the Democrat Party, there job is to be an “alternative” whenever the Democrats go too far so they can hold the line until the Democrats recover power.

I have been saying for years that nothing of value can be established until the GOP is utterly destroyed, the “hold your nose” strategy achieves nothing but the suffocation of individual liberty and the rule of law.

This cycle will not be the reform cycle, this is the clean house part and it is a necessary prerequisite to the reform part.

Susan Collins appeared to be on board until they added the repeal of the Individual Mandate to the bill. That would gut Obama Care, and since she is an Obama Care supporter, despite the fact that she voted against when it was passed, she’s indicating that she is off the reservation again.

Frankly I wish the Senate had not added the Mandate repeal to the bill. It will only make it harder to pass, but maybe that’s what they want to do to see that it doesn’t pass. I wouldn’t put anything passed these people. They just can’t be honest with their supporters.

The cures for the national debt are #1 a growing economy and #2 real cuts in government spending.

Yes. Yes, they are. But all those Republicans, including the president, who are voting for this are not voting for these and won’t vote for these. They consistently stand in the way of free markets and cutting government spending. Republicans have had ample opportunity in my lifetime to cut spending, but they haven’t. They increase spending. It’s not just your list of usual suspects who are behind this failure in the Republican Party. If they brought this along to the table, the fact they don’t want to do any of the things they claim would be obvious – sort of like repealing Obamacare 17 times when voting for repeal was a lost cause and then failing to vote for it after they were in charge.

Sendgop:

Ran Paul – I know this guy is a darling for many of you, but to me he’s a purist who also can’t understand the fine art of compromise. Hey Ron, let’s get something instead of nothing. Maybe you can do some tweaking after we accomplished SOMETHING with both houses of Congress and the White House.

Sen. Rand Paul says he plans to vote for the Senate tax reform bill despite reservations about parts of it. In an op-ed, Paul praises the bill’s steep revenue cuts and its provision to abolish the Obamacare individual mandate. But he also says the bill is “not perfect,” and he’d like to see “more permanence” for individual tax cuts.

This bill is not perfect. I would prefer a larger cut. I would prefer that the Senate bill match the House bill and keep some form of state and local deductions so that no one gets caught in the trap of losing too many deductions at once and failing to benefit from the tax cuts. Lastly, I’d like to see more permanence on the individual side. Some of that is still achievable. Some of it is due to the peculiarities of the budget and Senate rules and will have to wait for another day.

The Kentucky Republican urges his Senate colleagues to back the sweeping tax cuts.

I have a hard time disagreeing with Paul on this.

Sendgop:

We need to lower our corporate tax rate, which is currently the highest in the industrialized world.

I wonder why they don’t pass a simple bill cutting this, just this and nothing else. I think it’s because they don’t really want to. That’s a lot of revenue potentially, and it’ll hammer their budgets.

Sendgop:

We need to simplify our tax code so that average citizens will not have to pay an accountant to file their income taxes.

I don’t think the average citizen has to pay an accountant. They’re not that complicated for most of us, not really. I have know a lot of folks who get huge returns – returning all withheld income plus earned income credit – to pay tax services a couple hundred dollars for the service though. Don’t know why. Free options with help are available, and Free-file holds your hand – even though it takes longer than just filling out the paper form.

But yeah, simplification would be nice. Eliminate deductions and extra junk and lower the rates. Except that makes politicians’ buddies unhappy because they start losing their political favors – and they stop donating to the politicians in question in favor of ones who will fulfill their crony dreams.

I don’t know what the payroll tax is, if you are referring to the income tax then absolutely; taxing income is immoral and insures the existence of a deduction code which is where 100 percent of the corruption lies.

I don’t know what the payroll tax is, if you are referring to the income tax then absolutely; taxing income is immoral and insures the existence of a deduction code which is where 100 percent of the corruption lies.

If you think that the Republicans will vote to end the FICA tax and end Social Security, you can plan on the Prohibition Party getting more votes in the next election. You guys need to get in touch with reality. Messing with Social Security payments to the elderly is political suicide.

If you think that the Republicans will vote to end the FICA tax and end Social Security, you can plan on the Prohibition Party getting more votes in the next election. You guys need to get in touch with reality. Messing with Social Security payments to the elderly is political suicide.

We have to talk about phasing the system out though; anyone whose been receiving Social Security since 2010, will get less than they put into it.

SS is a pyramid scheme, reliant on there being a large body of people paying into it rather than taking out. It took demographics itself for granted, and has declined in its “benefit” to recipients year after year, to the point now where it no longer provides a benefit, but a cost to the people using it.

If we’re going to do welfare, we need to move towards the Chilean model. Pensions predicated on a sovereign fund, which is put out into the market.

We should not be in a system where the money is held in fictional accounts that only exist in Government papers; the money having been in reality, spent already.

Great ideas, Slim, the problem is, as Sendgop pointed out, it ain’t gonna happen now or in the foreseeable future.

Another possibility would be a phased transition from a “retirement program” to a “safety net” program:

Freeze the maximum benefit where it is and let the payouts gradually inflate into it via the COLA. I have no idea if the numbers would work out to prevent eventual collapse but, in any event, it ain’t ever gonna happen.

I wish I had been afforded the opportunity to take that 15% of my salary monthly and put it into the stock market securities instead of giving it to the government. I’d be a millionaire today if I had. As it is, there’s not a plugged nickel in the SS “trust fund.” What’s there are IOUs. They have SOME value, to be sure, but that’s all they really are because the SS system was subverted years ago by REQUIRING that ALL the cash paid into it that isn’t immediately needed to pay CURRENT recipients MUST be invested in T-Bills. Who gets the money from selling T-Bills? The general treasury. Who SPENDS the money in the general treasury? CONGRESS, and for decades, it’s spent more money than the treasury has taken in…even in the Reagan years when revenues to the government DOUBLED, Congress managed to spend more than it received…something like 40% MORE, in fact. For each NEW dollar in income, Congress spent a dollar and 65 cents!